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Cataclysm Daily Quests, Part 1: Daily basics and profession dailies
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Read the entire WoW Insider Cataclysm Daily Quest Guide series! Since their introduction in the Netherwing quest line in The Burning Crusade, daily quests have become an integral part of World of Warcraft's design. Chances are you're familiar with the concept of dailies themselves and probably did your fair share of them during Wrath of the Lich King, but it's a whole new world out there. In this article, we'll go over the new daily quests in Cataclysm, their rewards, and how to get the most out of them. To make sure we're all on the same page, let's go over the basics of daily quests. In addition to or instead of normal, one-time-only quests, certain NPCs throughout the world will offer "daily" quests. These quests are repeatable and bear a blue exclamation point rather than a yellow one to indicate their status. In the quest log, they'll be marked (Daily) and once you complete one, there'll be a counter at the top of your quest log showing how many daily quests you have completed that day. When dailies were originally introduced, it was only possible to complete 10 per day, which meant you had to pick and choose which ones you'd complete. The limit has since been raised to 25, meaning you can spend a far greater amount of time on daily quests and also reap greater rewards. To break up the monotony somewhat, many daily quest givers will change their quests each day, picking from a set table of quests they offer. Generally speaking, the number of dailies offered by a particular quest hub will remain the same from day to day, though the specific quests may rotate.
Breakfast Topic: Having fun in old, familiar places
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. We all run random dungeons. Usually, we'll just do our job, tanking, healing or DPSing to get through the dungeon as fast as we can. But every once in a while, we may get the inclination to mess around a bit. My main character is a disc priest. Since all I really have to do in heroics is shield the tank every once in a while, I'll often run around like a crazy person using Holy Nova to try and beat the DPS. Not only does it make the runs go faster, but it's more fun than just standing around doing nothing. Sure I could use other, more normal DPS abilities, but it's fun to see those golden bubbles everywhere. If I'm in a group with guildies and they know it's coming, it's sometimes fun to play "how low can you go" with the tank's health. I'd never try it in a PUG random, but with friends who can laugh if it goes wrong, it's fun. One thing I've always wanted to try but never have is healing in shadow spec. While it wouldn't really be difficult, I don't really know how random groups would react to it, having their healer running around in Shadowform all the time.
Free Realms offers lifetime sub for a limited time
Sony Online Entertainment has just announced the availability of lifetime memberships for its family friendly virtual world Free Realms. The deal will only be available from Friday, July 16th through Monday, August 2nd, and will run you $29.99 per membership. The lifetime package offers subscribers the chance to partake of the freemium title's huge variety of quests, minigames, exploration, and house decorating options sans the worry of membership dues. Full membership also unlocks all jobs, offers access to members-only items, and gives you a 10% discount in the Station Store. Additionally, SOE has alerted to us to its new daily activities feature, whereby players are guaranteed a reward of some sort simply by participating. The first in a planned series of dailies is called "Rob Robbie," and will net players a valuable prize if they manage to complete the activity for six straight days and then log in again on day seven. Visit the official Free Realms website to learn more about the game, and don't forget to mark your calendars to take advantage of the limited lifetime deal.
Time Is Money: Putting your emblems to work
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time Is Money. If you're like me, you have a lot of excess emblems sitting around. Maybe you never got around to spending them before the next tier came out, or maybe the badge gear just never quite compared to your raid drops. Whatever the case, there is no sense letting them go to waste when you could put them to work and earn some gold! First, here is a quick breakdown of the current badge system, from most recent and difficult to acquire on down: Emblem of Frost: These can be acquired primarily by raiding Icecrown, completing the Raid Boss Per Week "weekly," or by completing one WotLK heroic dungeon per day using the Random tool. Emblem of Triumph: Most raids now drop these badges, as well as heroics. You will also be awarded these for doing any number of WotLK heroic dungeons past your first one per day using the Random tool. You will also get some by completing your first normal WotLK dungeon per day using the Random tool, as well as completing the Raid Boss Per Week "weekly." Also of note: If you get Heroic Oculus using the random tool, don't drop group! Not only has it been nerfed like crazy, but when you defeat the end boss, every player will receive a loot bag that will contain these badges and more, plus a chance at getting the super rare Reigns of the Blue Drake, which used to be available only by killing Malygos, who now drops his 25-man version (Azure) in both 10 and 25-man. Emblem of Conquest: Originally, these were acquired by running 10-man Coliseum, or 25-man Ulduar. Emblem of Valor: Originally these dropped from Ulduar 10-man and Naxxramas 25-man. Emblem of Heroism: These were among the first WotLK badges, and dropped from Naxxramas 10-man and heroic dungeons.
The Queue: Naptime
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's (almost) daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I'm going to kick off today's edition of The Queue with a question for you, the reader. It's a gravely important question, so read carefully! What should I order from the local Chinese joint for dinner tonight? Should I go with my usual, shameful choice of orange chicken? Or should I go a spicier route and go for the Kung Pao? Heck, maybe I should bring a little variety to the table with a Pu Pu Platter? Help me, WoW.com! Sindrow asked... "Remember how faction switching caused all AT progress to be wiped? Is it safe to say that race change will not have similar effects, since everything is occurring within the same faction? Can you guys think of *any* negative result of a race change?"
Patch 3.3 PTR: New weekly quests to do while raiding
News is, of course, flooding out of the Public Test Realm as the usual suspects dive into the newly released test patch and datamine every bit of data they can. And this little nugget has appeared over on MMO Champion: apparently patch 3.3 will bring quests very much like the dungeon and heroic dailies (though it's probably a good assumption these will have weekly intermittence), but for 10 and 25-man raids. The full list of quests is after the break, but it's the old "XXXXX must die!" with the always insightful Archmage Timear determining that, for the good of the cosmos, some raid boss must be vanquished yet again.At this point in the PTR, we're told that the quests reward 10 Emblems of Frost (which again hints that they'll be broken up over weekly periods rather than daily periods, as 10 Emblems a day is a heck of a lot of emblems). But of course that can all change before the actual patch goes live. Just know that if these quests go in, a) your raid will probably be heading back to farmed content at least once per week, and b) at least you'll be getting a nice reward from the run.
Time is Money: Fishing for angels
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).Angelfish, that is. Not only are they scrumptious, they're extremely profitable. How does 80 gold (give or take, depending on your realm) per stack of 20 sound to you?Time InvestedSet aside 10-30 minutes a day to farm up a stack or two. If no one else is farming Dragonfin Angelfish in the area at the same time, you should be able to knock it off pretty quickly.
The best of WoW.com: August 4-11, 2009
Exciting times in the World of Warcraft lately -- patch 3.2 is out, and with it comes brand new instances, new items to find, and a multitude of changes to make the game more fun. Oh, and don't forget about BlizzCon -- speculation is at a fever pitch with the event just 10 days away, and as you can see from the first post below, the leaks are starting to come already. Here's a sampling of the news you'll find on Joystiq's WoW.com. News Cataclysm races leakedWoW.com reveals the new playable races in the Cataclysm expansion, to be announced at BlizzCon next week. Player reaction to the 5-man TrialWhat did players think of the brand new 5-man instance? Patch 3.2 Known IssuesHere's what's still broken in the newest patch. BigRedKitty gets his own gun in AzerothOur friend and former coworker BRK gets honored with his own piece of ingame gear. 53 Emblems per dayWant to take advantage of the Emblem changes in the new Heroics? Run this route and farm as many emblems as you can. Features Every kind of player's guide to patch 3.2Not sure what to do in patch 3.2? Let us help. Arcane Brilliance: Good and bad in patch 3.2The Mage column examines the pros and cons of what's happening to them in the recent patch. Insider Trader: Progressive professionsHow to move professions forward in the future of the game. Time is Money: On patrolHave only a little time but want to make a lot of gold? Join the Troll Patrol! World of Warcraft Patch 3.2 Mounts guideThe mount changes have affected the game a lot -- here's the rundown of everything that's new.
BlizzCast episode 10 released
Zarhym has announced on the forums that BlizzCast episode 10 is out right now for your listening pleasure. In the official podcast, he talks with Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer and Senior Game Designer Dave Maldonado about patch 3.2 and the Argent Tournament instances released with it. Strangely, it sounds like the podcast was actually recorded before the release, but of course now everyone knows that we fight the Black Knight in the 5-man and what the dailies are all about. Especially if you've been paying close attention to the testing on the PTR, lots of the "news" about patch 3.2 won't be all that surprising.They also look forward to BlizzCon: all of the developer panels and meetings that go on there, both from the perspective of fans (hey, we actually can be literate and reasonable instead of QQing all the time!) and from developers (turns out they are "not just blue text" -- who knew?!). It's not a super groundbreaking podcast, but as a wrapup to the release of 3.2 and a short preview to BlizzCon, it works just fine. And there's a bonus: Zarhym is offering up a contest -- answer some questions about the podcast after you listen to it, and you could win a "fabulous prize." The rules give away what the prize is: a Draenei vs. Blood Elf diorama or some action figures.And remember, if you've missed any of the BlizzCast episodes so far, you can find them both in iTunes or over on Blizzard's site, or just read our wrapups here on WoW.com.
A simple way to Get Kraken!
A Youtube user by the name of psychorabbitt left a comment on our Get Kraken! video with a pretty sweet tip for getting the quest done easier. It was so simple and obvious that I feel really, really dumb for not thinking of it. If you have a video card that does the whole "you can't see the monsters until you're already flying past them" thing while doing this quest, you can just make yourself a macro.#showtooltip Flaming Spears/tar North Sea Kraken/tar Kvaldir Deepcaller/use Flaming SpearsUpdate: Kittahsmash from the comments below posted a macro that works quite a bit better.#showtooltip Flaming Spears/tar North Sea Kraken/use Flaming Spears/tar Kvaldir Deepcaller/use Flaming SpearsSpam away, and your quest is done! Honestly, I probably won't use it, because I like the hunt-and-peck of trying to find and target the mobs you need on bombing quests. Just spamming a macro would be way less fun for me personally. If you're not such a fan of bombing quest or your rig isn't very cooperative during this one, sure, use the macro all you want.Yeah, I know, obvious macro is obvious... but hopefully I'm not the only one that didn't think of it. Boy would I feel dumb. Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
Time is Money: On patrol
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).How would you like to make 45g in less than 20 minutes per day? Act quickly, and they'll throw in 850 Argent Crusade reputation and a shot at your very own Deputy Pa'trolla Badge!Individual results may vary. If you are not level 80 yet, you won't make as much gold, but you will gain a whopping amount of experience! So how can you take advantage of this once-a-day offer? By going on a Troll Patrol of course! You need to finish in 20 minutes or less to get the full benefits, but lucky for you, I have all the tips to get you movin'.
Argent Tournament dailies: Get Kraken!
The Patch 3.2 daily quests are all rather straightforward, but since the QuestHelper-esque features that were intended to be in the patch were pulled, we figured we would go over them all anyway. The first one that we'll be tackling is Get Kraken! This quest can only be seen once you've acquired the Crusader title, and it's the return of a Burning Crusade staple: On-rails bombing quests. Watch the video above, and that's pretty much the whole thing. The goal is to chuck 8 Flaming Spears at the kraken that's harassing the Silver Covenant and Sunreaver ships, and use the spear to take out 6 Kvaldir Deepcallers on the way. It's on rails, so there's no search element involved at all. You kill as many as you need while in-flight, or you don't. If you don't, you grab another flight.I somewhat suspect that when the patch first launches, you're going to be taking the extra flight more often than not. When there are only a few people flying around, there are more than enough Deepcallers to go around. Even though they respawn nearly instantaneously, targeting and hitting them will be a pain when there are dozens and dozens of people doing the quest. The kraken isn't an issue, though. The thing can take a beating, and it's by far the easiest of the two targets. If you don't scare all of your necessary hits on it in one go, chances are you just forgot to do it.
The Queue: Are you a god?
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.A simple question instead of an introduction.%Poll-31854%Go get her, Ray!Some music too which you can listen to while reading today's Queue. And some more. Don't watch the videos, they're dumb. But the music is great.Angus asked... "Why is there a defense channel for every zone? Specifically, why would anyone be attacking the Twisting Nether? I found this to be my most amusing channel. The raid or instance ones are funny, but this one always cracks me up."
The Queue: RaF'd dailies are delicious
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.I have to admit, o' faithful Queue readers, that I considered pawning off answering questions today to someone else so I could have more time to catch up on other work. Patch days can get quite busy around the WoW.com head quarters. Last night for example. Alex, Mike Sacco, and I had heard that there was a new raid lockout extension feature in place, so we rushed onto the Patch 3.2 PTR to grab some screenshots. Of course that meant we had to deal with the thing crashing every few minutes. And once we finally did make it into ZG to get a quick boss kill, Sacco disconnected and the server announced a shutdown in 5 minutes. But hey, we got the kill off and the screenshots captured with 15 seconds left until the shutdown. We won!Aideros asked..."When are more "hero classes", like the Death Knight, coming out? What are the speculations? Has anything been said about them since WotLK?"
Addon Spotlight: I Have Macro Lol!
Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here. We covered another Ackis mod, Ackis Recipe List, just last Sunday. This one is (in my opinion) even cooler, and will be of interest to a wider audience than recipe completists. I Have Macro Lol!, or IHML for short, generates a dynamic macro (like Mounted) for you to use in various situations, like dailies and boss fights. You can use just one slot on your action bar, and the macro will adapt itself to whatever situation you happen to be in. From the configuration interface (/ihml), you can set up what macro you want to use in any given boss encounter or zone. The macro is generated upon entering a zone or loading BigWigs boss modules for a boss fight (no support for Deadly Boss Mods, as far as I know). You can also set up default macros for parties, raids, PvP, etc. The real value here is dailies. There are several different daily zones in Wrath, all of which have different items that need to be used. Back in BC, I could get by with just my Isle of Quel'Danas macro; nowadays, if I was still bothering with dailies, I would need about six different macros to swap out if it wasn't for something like IHML. The boss functionality is just icing. Thanks again, Ackis, for another solid mod to fill a gap. Download I Have Macro Lol! at WoWInterface or Curse Addons are what we do on Addon Spotlight. Let Power Auras Classic show you what you need to know with pretty glowing pictures. Check out another Ackis mod: Ackis Recipe List. And remember, Addon Spotlight is fueled by viewers like you, so if you have a mod you think we should take a look at, drop us a line.
Ghostcrawler on the future of 5-mans
Snowyfox of the US Vek'nilash server recently brought up a point on the forums which is near and dear to my heart: 5-mans really feel like they've lost their heart. In both Vanilla WoW and Burning Crusade, you could usually count on having the motivation and reward for running a 5 man no matter what your level. In Vanilla WoW, you might do a tribute run for potions and buffs or a Stratholme run for Abomination stitchings for an enchant. In BC, you'd run for badges. In Wrath of the Lich King... not so much. Badges don't stretch so far since most of the good stuff requires badges only obtained in raid dungeons, and even the daily quests aren't even close to as lucrative as just heading up to the Argent Tournament or over to the Sons of Hodir and doing some dailies.
Phat Loot Phriday: Porcelain Bell
This is a weird one -- we've been doing Ulduar epics lately, but here's something a little different for you to hunt down.Name: Porcelain Bell (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory)Type: Poor Salvage ItemDamage/Speed: N/AAttributes: Embellished with a figure reaching toward a swan. This is a grey piece of vendor trash, probably the worst quality item we've ever featured here. Wait a minute Mike, I can hear you saying, this is supposed to be Phat Loot Phriday. Why are you showing us a piece of vendor junk? Because, my friends, in the eyes of the vendors, this little bell is worth more than the Warglaives of Azzinoth combined (and you could even throw in Thori'dal, too). Yes, this little bell sells to vendors for... wait for it... 100g. %Gallery-33600%
Breakfast Topic: What do you think of the Wintergrasp changes?
Ah, Wintergrasp. The first 'fun' PvP content I've ever come across in-game. The first time I found myself in the Keep, around level 75, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. All I knew for sure was that there were monsters outside the gates who smelled prime, young night elf and wanted my blood. Then a friend showed me how to max out my mining in an hour thanks to all the lovely nodes of saronite and titanium and I started to like the place more. I really got into the zone at 80 and found the battles immense fun and short enough even for my lax attention span. But, of course, there were problems. The Horde seem to out number us Alliance on my server and they're also a hell of a lot more organised. For them, Wintergrasp isn't just a sport, it's a carefully planned massacre. but, despite the instability, the DCs, the insufferable lag, it was fun. But I was keen to find out if Blizzard had plans to fix the problems so I asked Tom Chilton. He he specifically mentioned the issues of Wintergrasp and that they didn't think that the lag and other issues "was an acceptable play environment situation". So Blizzard did the 'smart' thing -- they nerfed it. Boo.So readers? What do you think of the weekly quests? Do you think nerfing Wintergrasp was the way to go? Now you only have to do them once every seven days, do you think you will do the battles less? Are you pleased you now get more Shards for the quests? Can't care less? Tell us!
Changes coming to the Crusader title
We were just talking about this on the podcast last night -- Turpster's tip a week or so ago was that going for the Crusader title in the Argent Tournament actually puts you at a disadvantage, because if you keep from turning in the last Valiant quest for the achievement, you don't lock off having the ability to do both Valiant and Champion quests together, thus, as you can see in the thread, earning an extra 36 gold a day, which adds up to 1000g a month. After you earn the ability to represent every city, you can't do the Valiant quests any more (instead, you have to earn city reputation through the Champion's Writ, which costs you 10g from the opposite reward). In short, right now, if you're leveling through the AT quests, stay away from the Crusader achievement until you have all of the city reputations covered, and all the gold you want.Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), Bornakk says that Blizzard probably will make a change here soon to smooth everything out. But how they'll do that isn't quite clear -- they could leave the dailies (or some form of them) open even after you get the achievement, or they could beef up the achievement reward to make up for it. Not a hard fix either way. But yes, until then, you might want to rethink racing to the Crusader achievement, as there's more reward to be had by waiting.
Beating Cheese for Glowergold
I could not agree more -- of all of the cooking dailies, Cheese for Glowergold is my least favorite. All of the cooking collecting quests usually involve a little shoulder rubbing with people doing the same quest -- Infused Mushroom Meatloaf is another one where it's usually every man for himself down in those sewers. But none of them are more annoying than Glowergold's quest. I don't know if it's just that the respawn time seems longer, or that there are fewer spawn points and more to collect (you need six glasses, which doesn't seem like much as collecting quests go, but it's a lot while doing it), or that there's no specific place to find the glasses (they're littered around tables, usually in restaurants, around Dalaran). But yeah -- every time the wine and cheese quest comes up, I sigh, knowing that I'm going to be standing in the inn straight across from the cheese shop waiiting for a spawn.But just so this isn't a complete QQ post, let's give you a few tips for next time. That inn is usually where I stand, but it's pretty crowded -- it's definitely worth, after just picking up the quest, looking around the faction inn where you get the cooking daily as there's usually one or two in there. And I didn't know this, but apparently there are a few spawn points downstairs in The Cantrips and Crows tavern (so when you run down there for the Jewel of the Sewers, keep an eye out for glasses also). And there are four spawns in the Violet Hold as well (so you can stop by and grab those while picking up the Heroic and dungeon dailies).This might help a bit, but the fact is that this is an annoying quest, made more annoying when someone swoops in and grabs that glass you were headed for. Bornakk rightfully says it doesn't need a nerf (and as more people get everything they want out of the cooking dailies, we'll probably see less competition out there), but that doesn't make it any less frustrating.
